Courtney at Lake Forest ParkAlone by Chaboutae
You don't read this as much as you experience it. Take the time and let it affect you. Pay attention to what's really happening in each frame and it will gradually work its way into your heart and mind. It's dark and bleak and savagely human.My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris
First of all, the art alone is beautiful - Ferris turns the interior of a notebook into a lush bic-pen-crosshatched explosion of emotional expressive art. It's Harriet the Spy meets Anne Frank mashed with Maurice SendackWe Are Never Meeting In Real Life by Samantha Irby
Irby has an ability to confront tough issues head on with dark humor, genuine pathos and real pain. Her way of making everything she writes seem both deeply personal and urgently relevant to understanding each other is a talent most of us would never dare get toHer Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
This collection of short stories feels the way I think epiphanies are supposed to feel. Haunting, gorgeous, and bizarre, these inventive stories are sensual and creepy. Gentleman's Guide To Vice and Virtue by Mackenzie Lee
This story is just fun. It has its heartbreaking moments - quite a few of them, in fact - but at its core, it's an adventure story, a love story, a story of growth and self-acceptance, and so much more.Even This Page Is White by Vivek Shraya
Shraya pushes past the notion that racism is anything other than commonplace. It's multi-layered and thought-provoking, as well as imaginative and mind-opening. This combination makes this an unflinching, timely, and necessary read. Keep this as an antidote to the legion of white male poets on your syllabus. Sasquatch Hunters Almanac by Sharma Shields
This book was amazing. I hated it, and loved it. I want it burned, expunged from my memory. I want to read it once a year for the rest of my lifeDancer From The Dance by Andrew Holleran
I loved this book completely. It's humorous and achey, nostalgic and crude and poetic and so, so human.To read this is to enter a time machine to the New York of the 1970s and love every minute of it.Swallow Me Whole by Nate Powell
Swallow Me Whole is a masterpiece that fires on all cylinders, artistically, thematically and emotionally. Powell is an artist to look out for. Consider yourself warnedCall Me By Your Name by André Aciman
I saw someone call this book 'maddening', I think I'd like to second that. I never expected it to get under my skin like it's done. I think this is the only ever time I've been affected so much by a book that I feel it would be derogatory for me to even write something about it. I can't write something worth its standards.